Universities Save Time and Money With Open-Xchange

TARRYTOWN, NY, December 12, 2006 – Open-Xchange Inc., the leading provider of open source collaboration software, today announced that it has secured additional customer wins in the higher education market space. The Polytechnic of Namibia and the University Hospital of Cologne are using Open-Xchange Server to drive innovation in collaboration efforts and to save time and money.

“Our design objective is to ‘simplify’. We strive to make every aspect of our solution simple and productive. Whether you are a user or a system administrator - Open-Xchange Server delivers ease of use, fast web access, single password management and connectors to Linux, Windows and Apple environments. The administration module is particularly attractive to the academic market; adding, editing, and deleting students, staff and alumni is easy and fast,” said Paul Sterne, CFO and General Manager of Americas at Open-Xchange. “We are excited by the acceptance of Open-Xchange in this market space. The transparency of open source software tools like Open-Xchange Server would allow universities to use collaboration software as a learning tool and integrate it into the curriculum.”

The Polytechnic of Namibia

The Polytechnic of Namibia is Namibia's de facto university of science and technology. It has a staff of 400 and offers certificates, diplomas, bachelors of technology and master’s degrees to its 7,000 students. The Polytechnic is a dynamic institution that is acknowledged as the national standard in technological education.

"Open-Xchange costs about 3 times less than the other groupware solutions that were investigated, taking into consideration hardware and software cost," said Mr. Laurent Evrard, the Director of Computer Services of the Polytechnic of Namibia. “The web-based administration module is a major advantage. It reduces the number of hours spent on administration of the system and user management by about 50%."

The results with Open-Xchange have been immediate and easily evident for the Polytechnic. “In line with our reputation as a reliable and state-of-the-art IT department, we would like to provide our users with a reliable, fast, secure and open collaboration and messaging solution,” said Mr. Evrard. “Open-Xchange provides us with the ability to provide our users with a comfortable interface and easy access from anywhere in the world in a secure and stable environment.”

The University Hospital of Cologne is one of Germany’s leading academic medical centers. It employs over 6,000 medical personnel and support staff, and trains over 3,500 students, to conduct research and provide care for over 50,000 inpatients and 150,000 outpatients annually.

The University Hospital chose to move 3,500 accounts onto an Open-Xchange Server. Open-Xchange’s ability to provide e-mail access from any computer with an Internet connection, whether at home or on the road – was a major selling point for the hospital. Beyond basic messaging – e-mail, calendar and contacts – Open-Xchange’s integrated document sharing capabilities have become a popular and are extensively utilized by the user community.

Open-Xchange Server 5 delivers twice the functionality of the typical collaboration server at half the price. It works with more browsers, PDA’s and rich clients. Unique features – such as Documail, the integration of document sharing and email, Smart Links, Smart Permissions, and Universal Access – make it the most productive collaboration tool on the market. Organizations use Open-Xchange Server’s GUI-based administration module featuring Tiered Entitlement to implement role-based user management.

Open-Xchange Server 5 supports the two leading Enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat and SUSE and is available with the Collax Business Server. Innovative connectors, OXtenders, enhance customer flexibility by using open standard APIs to integrate existing IT infrastructures, or extend capabilities to mobile devices, fax servers, back-up utilities, email archiving tools and Samba administration tools.

Launched in August 2004, Open-Xchange’s open source project is licensed under the General Public License for the software program and the Creative Commons, Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike or CC:by-nc-sa for the digital content or Web Access Add-on. Open-Xchange Server is ranked #3 out of 358 groupware projects on the freshmeat.net website, #1 in document repositories, #4 in handhelds, and the #149 most popular overall project, out of more than 40,000 listed projects. On average, each month, the community version of Open-Xchange Server is downloaded more than 6,000 times.

About Open-Xchange Inc.

Open-Xchange Inc. delivers Smart Collaboration™ by offering reliable and scalable messaging and advanced collaboration solutions. Open-Xchange products provide IT departments with open source alternatives for messaging and advanced collaboration resulting in architectural freedom. Open-Xchange’s unique technology, Smart Collaboration™, has been awarded the LinuxWorld’s Product Excellence Award, ServerWatch’s Product Excellent Award, and InfoWeek’s Server Product of the Year. Open-Xchange Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, with research & development and operations in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, please visit www.open-xchange.com.